I really enjoyed this movie when I saw it in the cinema, I've watched it several times on DVD since, might watch it tonight!I really liked the School, Christabella and how they used music from the game. Really excited for the sequel, I've been waiting 6 years for it!

The movie was fun to watch and it was overall a good watch. I liked the mixture of different elements from the games, and the amazing atmosphere which they nailed perfectly. My only gripe really was the confusing plot it didn't really make sense as much as I would have liked but that's all that I can complain about. Its one of the better adaptions that Hollywood has come out with. Hopefully the second movie improves upon an almost great movie.

_________________To the left you can see fog. To the right you can see fog and right in front yep you guessed it more fog.

^ The sequel will most likely improve upon the first and let the audience in on some things the first film left out. (Maybe) My only worry is that moviegoers won't get it because it's been a few years since the first came out, and some people may not remember much from the first.Anyway, the discombobulated story is what most people had beef with in the first film, regardless if they were fans or not. If Revelations helps clear the air at least whilst introducing a new and unique experience, I will be satisfied.

It wasn't that the film had a difficult to grasp storyline, it was the symbolism that caused all the problems. Many complained that the film dumped information in the easiest to understand way possible, and they were right. The flashback and Dark Alessa's hospital monologue explained the entire movie in less than 20 minutes. What left people confused even after these juvenile explanation scenes was the ridiculous amounts of metaphor and symbolism used. So basically Bassett's going to have to explain everything anyway, regardless of whether people remember anything about the first film or not. In fact, they're less likely to be confused if they don't remember the original, because Bassett's said he's sticking to the official canon, which most people never understood. Hopefully, he'll use symbolism sparingly, and not let it mix with the storyline by adding stupid lines like "I have many names" (should have kept it like it was in the original script, where she simply says "Alessa" in response to Rose's query on her identity).

It wasn't that the film had a difficult to grasp storyline, it was the symbolism that caused all the problems.

I hear that one quite a lot, but I don't know if I'd fully agree with it. While Gans sure tried to create a certain amount of symbolism, I still have the feeling that a big part of the movies coherency and logic was simply either lost in editing or writing. Not that I personally had any problems following the plot, I think everybody who's acquainted with SH1 is able to connect the dots long before the movie does it for you, but looking at it again a few days ago I tried focusing on what exactly I liked and what bugged me about Silent Hill.

What I liked:The atmosphere was incredibly well crafted, both through the employment of lighting, music, camera techniques and pretty good actors. The sets were fantastic and made even the slightly slower scenes (*cough*Chris' scenes*cough*) quite a beauty to behold. I even liked the slightly hammy dialogue, mainly because it reminded me of the actual Silent Hill 1's dialogue, which was quite amusing at times (e.g. "This town is going to be devoured by darkness" ...*awkward pause* ... "Dahlia Gillespie". The way he says it I always expect Harry to shake his head and laugh it off with a "You crazy old bag").I also liked the general plot of mothers and daughters, also how they connected this to the new faith depicted in the movie. The new religion was quite well crafted as well, taking the one and a half times name dropped Jennifer Carol and creating a counter belief from it was kind of intriguing; it didn't go all the way I would have liked it, but it did it's part.

But now to what buggd me:I can't even say that there were actual parts that I disliked in the movie, because due to it's generally intelligent approach to follow exposition with a loud bang that disoriented you, you didn't have much time to consider some of the plot gaps. But they are there, and once you concentrate enough they really should start bugging you from a narrative perspective; especially when we are expecting a sequel. Now I know that the Chris plotline was inserted rather late, but many things established in his plot directly contradict what we are told in the story. One of the biggest gaps for me is, why is Alessa in Brookhaven at all? No, I don't mean that it should be Alchemilla, I couldn't care less about that. In the exposition between Gucci and Chris it is established that the mine fire was triggered during the sacrifice and the town was quickly evacuated, safe for the cultists. Now Gucci himself rescued Alessa, probably brought her to the hospital, no problem so far, but we see her in the intensive ward, in a room that has flowers put in it and a regular nursing staff as it appears. How long is that fire supposed to have taken until it was even noticeable that an evacuation might be in order? The way the Silent Hill and it's Otherworld dynamics are depicted it seems unlikely that Alessa somehow made herself and the cultists vanish before the evacuation took place. And if Gucci was so invested in her rescue, why didn't he notice that Alessa vanished from the hospital?

Another thing was the rather inconsistent depiction of Alessa. For one there is the never really explained plot gap of Alessa waiting 21 years to create Sharon and send her away. Now I am not saying that this is impossible to explain, I'm just arguing that the movie makes no attempt to explain it and this is a narrative fallacy. If release, revenge and ultimately rebirth was such a high goal for her, why wait 30 years if you apparently could have cut it down to 9? Also, we are informed that Sharon is everything that was left of Alessas goodness, so why is Alessa clearly portraying emotions that we would consider "good"? We learn that she spared Dahlia because a mother is the most important thing to a child, very well, but at the point where she basically cast out her goodness, her love for Dahlia should have vanished as well. Why employ such a philosophical concept like good and evil, if they could have just as well said that she used a small amount of her life in search for a better one? This is not a question of metaphors misunderstood, this is either misleading writing or a mistake. Not even the "wish for a new mother", which so many people see in Alessa, should exist in her...she should basically revel in destruction, bloodshed and pain.

Now am I saying that I disliked the Silent Hill movie? No, of course not, I loved it when I saw it in the cinema and I even enjoyed it during the recent rewatch. But from a narrative point it is a seriously flawed movie, this is not "why didn't the Empire send their whole fleet to the Deathstar" (which can be argued away with hybris), some of these plot gaps (and I mentioned only the 3 that bothered me most) hurt the narrative and make it inconsistent.

Gans tried to make the plot less confusing for a Western audience, but while he might have had a chance to succeed, if he had just weeded out the strange pop-mysticism of the game-series, he added so many unnecessary new plots that, at least in the final cut (and this is the only thing we can actually count in continuity), that it became a confused mess of a narrative. How exactly the plot of the film is supposed to be less confusing than the games still has to be explained to me.

- Not everybody who played SH1 understood the movie. I've heard just as many misinterpretations from fans of the game series as regular people.- It's logical that Alessa was able to remain in Brookhaven for a few hours after the burning. According to the newspaper articles Chris reads, the fire department initially believed they could stamp out the fire, so it likely took them a little while before they realized it was serious enough to call for an evacuation. If I recall correctly, there may also have been a suggestion in the articles that they tried evacuating the town by sections, until they came to the conclusion that everyone needed to go. Obviously, they would have tried everything possible to keep the sicker patients at the hospital from being evacuated, as a move could kill people like these (Alessa would fall squarely into that category). This gap of a few hours would have given Alessa more than enough time to stew in her quickly building rage. There is some evidence that the time between the kidnapping and the soul splitting was around 6 hours: Alessa's police report states she was kidnapped around 10 pm, and all of the clocks in both the Fog World and the Otherworld are stuck at 3:47, suggesting that this is when Alessa transformed the town.- Gucci would have been busy helping with the fire, and would not have had time to babysit Alessa. He says he was told that Alessa died that night, which means 2 things could have happened: A) the hospital staff may have been in such a frenzy moving patients and preparing for a possible evacuation that it was simply assumed that Alessa had died and had been moved, with no one having the time to look around and ask who had moved her body, or B) the hospital realized they had lost her and lied about it to avoid getting in trouble. Either way, it would have been assumed afterwards that Alessa was just another vanishing body. Given that half the townspeoples' bodies were never found, it's logical that the police thought Alessa may have been in the same category.- Adult Alessa obviously can still feel both sides of her soul, even when they're outside of her physical body. This is why she smiles during the revenge scene (despite that her dark side is no longer in her actual body), and keeps Dahlia alive (showing that she still feels good emotions). There is no reason that adult Alessa would exhibit either a good or a bad side if the entire soul wasn't still affecting her. She would just be an empty, emotionless shell - which she clearly is not.

This gap of a few hours would have given Alessa more than enough time to stew in her quickly building rage.

I would actually agree with you and contemplate on that further, wouldn't it be that she was portrayed to be in a private intensive care room, flowers placed at her bedside and at least one nurse already employed to look after her, "Lisa". Considering her intensive burns, she would have first received emergency treatment, her file must have been created, she must have gotten a room, the room must have been equipped... Let's say Brookhaven is a fast-working hospital, this would have still taken half a day until everything calmed down so much that there would be nobody in her room except one nurse, who btw. didn't seem stressed about the imminent possibility of an evacuation.

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There is some evidence that the time between the kidnapping and the soul splitting was around 6 hours: Alessa's police report states she was kidnapped around 10 pm, and all of the clocks in both the Fog World and the Otherworld are stuck at 3:47, suggesting that this is when Alessa transformed the town.

Let's say that was actually what was being implied, it is still rather stilted. Assuming the cultists were fast and kidnapped Alessa, fulfilled the ceremony, while Dahlia ran to the cops, explained everything and made them send over a team of the typical movie cops who don't need a warrant...this would still have taken about 2 or 3 hours, including transport to the hospital, treatment, settling down...6 hours seems fairly short for the depiction we got.

And on another note: Really?! All the clocks are at 3:47? You don't happen to have any scenes on your hand? Actually this brings up another problem I had with the ambiguity of the film. Did time stop in the Otherworld (Fog and Darkness)? The initial 2004 script clearly says no, because it is outright said that Christabella looked 30 years younger in the flashback and Anna tells that she was the only one born after the "calamity". Yet the final product is a tad too ambigious on this part, Christabella looks about the same, though even the make-up for Gucci (who isn't stuck in SH) didn't really do the job, so maybe they just forgot to think about aging anybody besides Dahlia.If the clocks were actually stopped at the moment they entered the Otherworld, wouldn't this imply time having stopped? Yes, it's symbolic and Hiroshima/atomic bombing/end of the world mumpitz, but the film has this nagging tendency to just jump around it's major plotpoints like a kid on a sugar-high, as if it's afraid that the answers might make us hit it in the face.

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Either way, it would have been assumed afterwards that Alessa was just another vanishing body. Given that half the townspeoples' bodies were never found, it's logical that the police thought Alessa may have been in the same category.

This is another point where I have to call bullshit on the movie, though the games are starting to display the same flaw, but with other consequences: There is never any decision on how big SH actually is.On the one hand almost half the town is supposed to have never been found, the town was evacuated over night, it was completely abandoned afterwards, which would imply a rather small town. Yet it has these grand structures, the hotel, the hospital and apparently enough residents that they simply left it at "we lost track of those we didn't find afterward". It's this wishy-washy "the town is as big as is convenient for the current plotpoint", which maybe a common thing between sequels, but is really distracting when happening in one film.

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Adult Alessa obviously can still feel both sides of her soul, even when they're outside of her physical body.

Now you're actually confusing me. Weren't you the one who kept harking on how Dark Alessa isn't an entity of it's own, removed from Alessas body? Because Sharon clearly is more or less removed from it or she couldn't make decisions that are clearly not Alessas...like walking up to a cliff and almost jumping down, which would have pretty much ruined Alessas chances at anything.Yes, there is some kind of mental connection between them, but I would call "plot fallacy" on any movie when on the one hand it tells me that Sharon is the extracted good that was left in Alessa and on the other hand I were told it was never seperated at all. This does not make sense. This is hammy teeny-show reasoning of why Devil McGoodlooks is suddenly joining the good guys though we were told that he sold his soul and all emotions to the devil.

- She did first receive emergency treatment, that's shown in the flashback. I doubt they took the time to ponder on the exact amount of hours needed to set up a burn tent because that's honestly a giant nitpick. She was burned, received emergency treatment, and was sent to a private room with a burn tent, as viewers would expect to see happen. Also, there's nothing saying whether Lisa is stressed or not, seeing as she says not a single word and appears for all of 30 seconds.- The clock in the school Fog World is at 3:47, and the DVD extras show a close-up of a clock in the hospital Otherworld that says the same thing. Everyone in the alternate reality does age, including Christabella. Eleanor goes from having jet black hair in the flashback to white hair when Rose meets her, Alessa grows into a woman who is played by an adult actress (Lorry Ayers), and Christabella gains fresh wrinkles and a giant streak of white in her hair that is not present in the flashback. The clocks would have been stopped because Alessa created a copy of the town as it looked at that moment. The cultists are a far different story, as they are not a creation of Alessa and are not supernaturally-made copies of people. The clocks not ticking has absolutely nothing to do with the aging of the cultists; they're two entirely separate concepts.- What were they supposed to do about the missing bodies? Actually going into the town for long periods of time is dangerous, especially inside enclosed buildings. That's not to mention that many of the townspeople had just finished taking part in a seriously illegal ceremony, and had every reason to want to disappear when they discovered the police knew what they had done. They obviously did go in and search for bodies, so what were they to do after that? Every article Chris reads, as well as the Brahams Herald, comments on the missing bodies, so this is a widely known mystery, not something whre they just didn't care. In one of the articles, it mentions that the police and mayor theorized that many of the missing people may have fled into the forest surrounding the town.- You're not thinking things through. Sharon trying to jump off a cliff was Alessa's will all along, hence why it's Dark Alessa who makes her do it. The point is that Alessa knows she needs to push Rose to get her to agree to come to the town, so she times everything perfectly so that Sharon doesn't start to jump until Rose is close enough to catch her. That way, Sharon doesn't die, but Rose thinks she would have, and so becomes more desperate to help her. Sharon and Dark Alessa living in separate bodies and having independant actions does not mean that Alessa can't feel that side of the soul or draw from it. Yes, Dark Alessa is independant of Alessa while still being an extension of Alessa's will, but she still does what Alessa wants, because that's what Alessa tells her to do. It's the same thing with Sharon, who acts autonomously but is subject to being told what to do by Alessa, such as walking off a cliff or drawing disturbing images. Alessa obviously still draws from these sides of the soul, which is why she smiles during the slaughter, but spares Dahlia's life. Dark Alessa and Sharon being somewhat autonomous is not mutually exclusive to Alessa being able to feel these parts of the soul.

First of all, these are all points that bother me about the movie. I do think they hurt the storytelling of the movie in the way it is right now, but I'm not trying to say "don't like the movie" or "this movie sucks". I myself like it quite a bit, but I'm still quite grounded in my opinion, though of course I'm always open for discussion...just to put that out there before people start saying I'm bitching about anything.

JKristine35 wrote:

I doubt they took the time to ponder on the exact amount of hours needed to set up a burn tent because that's honestly a giant nitpick. She was burned, received emergency treatment, and was sent to a private room with a burn tent, as viewers would expect to see happen.

Yes, but considering that we are to believe that at the very same time a city-wide evacuation was taking place, which was apparently so chaotic that they left the disappearance of at least 30-40 people (that's about the number of cultists we see) up to "they probably ran into the woods". I'm not saying it is completely impossible for such an event to play out like this, but it is too far beyond my personal suspension of disbelief that she was put in a separate room instead of being held in emergency state, ready for an evacuation.I just had the feeling that this "the whole town became a ghost town" plot was a little overly ambitious for this movie, it felt strained.

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Everyone in the alternate reality does age, including Christabella. Eleanor goes from having jet black hair in the flashback to white hair when Rose meets her, Alessa grows into a woman who is played by an adult actress (Lorry Ayers), and Christabella gains fresh wrinkles and a giant streak of white in her hair that is not present in the flashback.

Concerning Christabella, sometimes I see that and sometimes just not. But this does not appear like a woman who has aged another 30 years, which would put her into her 60's...and the grey in her hair seems to be missing in some sequences. Eleanor...is hard to judge because she's often wearing a veil, but yes she appears to have aged at least appropriately. I assume they just didn't want to hide Alice Krige under too much make-up like they did with Deborah Unger and loose too much of her facial expression by aging her, but they couldn't make her too young either or it wouldn't have been believable for her to be a cult leader in the 70's plot.Again, I understand why they probably felt this was "not so important", but for a project that is otherwise so visually ambitious it rips me out of the experience.

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The clocks would have been stopped because Alessa created a copy of the town as it looked at that moment.

Well no, apparently the Otherworld changed after that change as well. Silent Hill seemed to be a rather lively place until the mine-fire, but the stores in the Fogworld are boarded up and apparently abandoned as well. Yes it's creepy Otherworld shennanigans to change the general way the city looks, but why make the fogworld look just like the place really did look after everybody escaped the town...which is an event that apparently happened after Alessa created the Otherworld.These visual information just don't add up for people who just see the movie.

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You're not thinking things through.

Okay, disregarding the immense risk that Alessa took if she seriously made Sharon about to jump, I could accept that, but then if she was in contact with Sharon the whole time, why didn't she just make Sharon come to her? Why did she let Sharon run around the town and hide in the one spot where she's not safe (the hotel room)? The more you assume that she is in direct control of everything the more sloppy her plan appears.If her whole plan was getting a new mother and escaping that hell-hole...what made her stay there anyway? There was no magic keeping her trapped there like in the videogame and if she was truly in control of everything in the Otherworld and was simply toying with the cultists, what kept her there?

I'm not attacking anybody for being able to see the good in this movie, because it seriously is a solidly entertaining film, but for every plot-point there seems to be a plot-gap and this is what keeps me from declaring this a solid movie. The parts they took from the game are good and the new parts are good...but they don't seem to mingle that well.

- It took them at least a couple of hours to realize they needed to evacuate, and Alessa would likely have already been transferred to the room with the burn tent by that time. And again, what else would they do than theorize they'd run into the woods? They looked for the bodies, there were none. What else could they possibly do than try to put together logical explanations for where these people went? You act like things should have been handled differently, but how? The bodies weren't there, so there's nothing for them to find, no matter how much they look. They obviously did spend time and money searching for the people, or else the mystery of the disappearing bodies wouldn't have been mentioned by Gucci, the newspaper articles, and the Brahams Herald. It's not like they're going to theorize that space aliens took them, or that some angry little girl sucked them into an alternate reality, so what's wrong with the theory that they disappeared into the woods? Also, it was way more than 30 or 40 people who disappeared.

- Alice Krige has stated in an interview that she was specifically made to look two different ages 30 years apart, so she was intentionally aged.

- You're assuming that the alternate reality must be a 100% exact copy of the real world, which it isn't. It's a copy that was altered to represent Alessa - in specific, the Fog World is meant to represent who Alessa was before the burning; abandoned, lonely, isolated. I didn't really see a whole lot of places in the Fog World that were boarded up (actually, I don't recall any), so maybe those that were boarded up already were like that before the fire. What reason would they have for boarding up the shops in real world SH anyway? The place is on fire, and is closed off. No one's going to go there to steal anything.

- Alessa did not allow Sharon to run around the town, nor did she take her somewhere that she didn't want her. She led Sharon from the car before Rose woke up and intentionally took her to the only place Alessa ever felt safe - her own home. She knew Sharon would be protected from the monsters there, and would be right where she needed her to be when the cult realized who Sharon was. Alessa wanted Sharon in the church to give Rose that extra reason to agree to Dark Alessa's demands and to stand up to the cultists, and so she could recombine with her once the revenge ended. That's why Alessa causes the locket to swing open in front of Christabella (you can hear an audible click as the locket opens by itself from a fully closed position), and why she allows Christabella and the cultists to kidnap Sharon without doing anything to stop them. She planned it that way all along.

- Sharon/Alessa stays in the Fog World once she recombines for two reasons: A) she's selfish, and wants to keep Rose all to herself, and B) she's afraid of the real world, the one place where she was ostracized, raped, and burned alive.

Gans is a great visual director. you can tell he's a fan of the games. He really translated the visual identity of Silent Hill to the big screen with success.

The movie is engaging, and stunning. I think they did a great job in bringing some new ideas, while keeping what was the heart of Silent Hill 1. Also, I don't think Christopher is useless. Granted, he wasn't supposed to be in the movie at first, but his journey make the ending much more powerful.

I like how they didn't try to make jump scare. Gans wanted to tell an engaging story, and he succeeded.

While I do agree that they could have been more subtle with Alessa's story, I do like the way she told it. It was really creepy.

So I liked the movie because it respects its source material, it's still its own beast, and it's visually stunning. The atmosphere is incredible, and so are the sets.

I think the movie was fine for the fans in some ways but they really made next to no attempt to allow the film to really make sense for non fans of the games. If you're making a movie you need to make it work as a movie by itself.

I personally didn't care about a single character in the movie tbh. When characters died I had pretty much no reaction other than maybe "oh, ew. I guess". I really hope the second film can do more than just visually impress.

Edit-Rewatching just to solidify my opinions. The movie really moves at a breakneck pace once Rose actually gets to the town which is uh...kinda bad.

The leaps in logic the film has Rose making sometimes blows my mind. So she follows Alessa thinking she's Sharon then opens a stall to find a dead guy...and she...reaches in his mouth for a thingy...ok...

The fact that you do stuff like that in the game doesn't somehow make it look less stupid. The film kinda makes me think of Prometheus. All visuals and zero logic.

I think the movie was fine for the fans in some ways but they really made next to no attempt to allow the film to really make sense for non fans of the games. If you're making a movie you need to make it work as a movie by itself.

Edit-Rewatching just to solidify my opinions. The movie really moves at a breakneck pace once Rose actually gets to the town which is uh...kinda bad.

The leaps in logic the film has Rose making sometimes blows my mind. So she follows Alessa thinking she's Sharon then opens a stall to find a dead guy...and she...reaches in his mouth for a thingy...ok....

Yes, I was shocked to go online and find out this fantastically wierd movie was based in a video game. And incredulous to read the story that they were trying to tell instead of the one that actually made it on film. There is no way anyone would guess this without knowledge of the games.

In your example, Rose sees I Double Dare You [childspeak] written on the wall with an arrow pointing toward the corpses mouth. Rose knows that Sharon was sketching dark pictures of the town when she was having episodes. Therefore Rose knows they are linked and that she needs only to figure out what Sharon was obssessed with. And thus the child writing is daring her to reach into the corpses mouth. yeah.

But, that's part of why I loved the film. The characters are just good enough that you want to find out what exactly what the plot actually was. And this lead me to an online quest looking for clues.

Once they showed where the siren noise was coming from and got into the whole cult/witch crap that's where the movie went from hero to zero. (It would have been so much better to not know where the siren was coming from like they do in the game. So if its coming from the church, who is triggering the noise? Do the order members have walkie talkies around town and once they notice the darkness coming do they radio back to the church to sound the siren off? Just lame.. The whole hospital itself should have been like at least 30 mins as its a very important part of the game, instead they just do a 5 min run through..I also disliked the ending of the movie, once rose got to the room in the hospital to find alessa, it was like "congratulations! you won!, now let me explain everything!", that killed whatever joy i had left.

It's a flawed movie for sure, but the games are just as flawed. I like this one a lot better than the game it was based on (as in Silent Hill 1). There's actually a lot of SH3 in this movie though. Christabella is a lot like Claudia, Rose has a more than slight resemblance to an older Heather and we have a 'birth' through our female protagonist which brings on the 'final boss'. which I believe is why a lot of the sequel feels a bit like a retread. I really get the impression Gans was going for a bit of a 'best of' with the film.

I also prefer the brotherhood (I think that's what they call them?) to The Order, since they're a lot, shall we say, 'closer to home'. Religious fundamentalists surround us to this day (in the US moreso than here in the UK where I am, but still), and while there may not be many burnings, there is still paranoid violence 'in the name of God'. A cult wanting to summon their deity is cool and all but this was so much more real and so much more frightening. The recent Kevin Smith film Red State was scary for the same reasons. You could almost see why Christabella thought she was doing good, and that their conviction got them so far as to perform such acts, thinking they would make things better. Claudia and the video game version of Dahlia come across much harder to believe in or relate to, due to their somewhat satanic natures. The cult here recalled films like The Wicker Man, and the Carrie-inspired revenge ending is an absolute screamer, a real air-punch moment for somebody as scared of and sick of religious fundamentalists as myself.

_________________Where we're from, the birds sing a pretty song, and there's always music in the air.

It's a flawed movie for sure, but the games are just as flawed. I like this one a lot better than the game it was based on (as in Silent Hill 1). There's actually a lot of SH3 in this movie though. Christabella is a lot like Claudia, Rose has a more than slight resemblance to an older Heather and we have a 'birth' through our female protagonist which brings on the 'final boss'. which I believe is why a lot of the sequel feels a bit like a retread. I really get the impression Gans was going for a bit of a 'best of' with the film.

I also prefer the brotherhood (I think that's what they call them?) to The Order, since they're a lot, shall we say, 'closer to home'. Religious fundamentalists surround us to this day (in the US moreso than here in the UK where I am, but still), and while there may not be many burnings, there is still paranoid violence 'in the name of God'. A cult wanting to summon their deity is cool and all but this was so much more real and so much more frightening. The recent Kevin Smith film Red State was scary for the same reasons. You could almost see why Christabella thought she was doing good, and that their conviction got them so far as to perform such acts, thinking they would make things better. Claudia and the video game version of Dahlia come across much harder to believe in or relate to, due to their somewhat satanic natures. The cult here recalled films like The Wicker Man, and the Carrie-inspired revenge ending is an absolute screamer, a real air-punch moment for somebody as scared of and sick of religious fundamentalists as myself.

It probably mirrors one's view on religion. I think the first film just did a better job at classic cult violence. In my review I praised Bassett for the lack of social commentary, which risks transforming the movie into a preachy op-ed. Like Christopher Lee. Christabella's cult was scarier post-apocalypse because Christabella-Borg Queen had better lines, better acting, and a quiet situation to explain herself. Alessa gives us a cause to fear her.

In SHR we only hear Claudia locked in a struggle with Dark Alessa and no reason to pick sides except the memory of the first movie and a few plain statements.

I'm very new to this series, to put it simply, I finished my first playthrough of SH1(my first SH game), watch this movie, and saw the sequel on opening day all in the same week. I loved this movie, after playing the game I found it had everything I would want from a film adaption:

It entertained the story enough: I knew little about this adaption before watching it. Off the bat, I expect videogame movies to invent their own continuity(they usually do), and I was suprised how faithful it was up onto post-school. While I understand the series has a fairly specific plot at this point, it's worth noting that very little is explicitly stated in the first game. Sure, it took huge liberties with the order, but I was fine with that, the story is still about a tortured psychic girl, burned for crazy religious purposes, and the town being engulfed by her nightmares. Rose and Sharon's plight is identical to Harry and Cheryl's. Dahlia is blatantly misperesented, but the rest of the order in that movie pretty much took care of her in game role anyway. I understand many feel Alessa's explanatory monologue was ridiculous, but I saw it in different light. You have to pay attention to details if you wish understand SH1's plot, Alessa's monologue really highlights this: the tortured individuals, the hidden door, the janitor, "watch me burn." Moviegoers won't rewatch the movie for hints to the plot, so I see why they were pointed out.

The monsters were great: Seriously, from that first grey child, to the hallway full of nurses, I thought the monsters were portrayed awsomely. All looked realistic as opposed to goofy, and Rose's encounters with them were appropriately full of tension and WTF. The movie's original machination, the janitor, is one of the film's best parts. He's so creepy and blatantly symbolic, he's original yet a great representation of what SH monsters are supposed to be.

They got the atmosphere down: Silent Hill looks like a dead ringer for the game, along with that awesome siren, great shifts to the Otherworld, and actual music from the games, the movie really captures the Silent Hill feel. That alone makes it the best video game movie I've seen.

My only real complaint is slightly corny dialogue...which was the case in game as well.

As for Revelations: Crap, just crap...I pray its not an accurate depiction of Silent Hill 3.

_________________Only played Silent Hill 1 so far,Kaufmann is a badass...can't say the same for his sidequest...

The monsters were great: Seriously, from that first grey child, to the hallway full of nurses, I thought the monsters were portrayed awsomely. All looked realistic as opposed to goofy, and Rose's encounters with them were appropriately full of tension and WTF. The movie's original machination, the janitor, is one of the film's best parts. He's so creepy and blatantly symbolic, he's original yet a great representation of what SH monsters are supposed to be.

That's a great review and you hit some of the good points of that movie. Say, what is it that you'd say the janitor represents and which scenes does he do it the most?

That's a great review and you hit some of the good points of that movie. Say, what is it that you'd say the janitor represents and which scenes does he do it the most?

Well...the janitor only has one scene. As for what he represents: I found it pretty creepy how he emerged from the bathroom stall, flicked his toung at Rose in a vulgar, and spread somehing around the wall like it was some kind of contagion. Come Alessa's monologue, and the intention is clear. It alludes to the janitor sexually assaulting Alessa in the bathroom.

_________________Only played Silent Hill 1 so far,Kaufmann is a badass...can't say the same for his sidequest...